e-Business Watch surveys

e-Business Watch is an observatory initiative launched by the European Com-mission in late 2001. The e-Business Watch monitors the adoption, develop-ment and impact of electronic business practices in different sectors of the European economy. The purpose of the project is to provide reliable and methodically consistent empirical information about the extent, scope, and factors affecting the speed of e-business development at the sector level in an internationally comparative framework, information which have previously not been available from official statistics.

Until the end of 2007, the e-Business Watch initiative had conducted five large scale enterprise survey rounds. Each survey had a different coverage of industrial sectors and countries. The surveys are based on independently drawn random samples from pre-specified country-sector combinations, strat-ified by three enterprise size classes (less than 49 employees, 50-250 employ-ees, or more than 250 employees) to enable a representative representation of the respective country-sector findings. A consistent survey method was used, interviewing decision makers in companies (e.g. IT managers, managing di-rectors or the owner) by computer-aided telephone interviews (CATI). Each interview collected basic information about the company, including confirma-tion of sector membership, number of employees, number of establishments, and basic financial information such as turnover development. The major-ity of questions related to the availabilmajor-ity and usage of various ICT and e-business technologies.

During the course of the project, changes have also been made to the questionnaire that was used for the surveys (see: www.ebusiness-watch.org).

These changes partially reflected prior experience with survey results, identi-fication of additional aspects that deserved more attention, but also changes in the technological environment due to newly emerging trends that needed to be reflected in the questionnaire. The implemented changes led to incon-sistencies between the surveys, which makes them difficult to compare. Only

some questions remained unchanged over the entire project life cycle. Thus, in this study we use data from three surveys, i.e. the Nov/Dec 2003, 2005 and 2006 surveys.

Table 2.4: Country-sector coverage e-Business W@tch survey Nov/Dec 2003

The Nov/Dec 2003 survey covered ten sectors in 25 European countries.

In sum, the data set contains 7,302 valid observations. Regarding the geo-graphical scope of the survey, 4,670 were conducted in the old EU and Nor-way and the remaining 2,632 in the Acceding Countries. Within each sector, sampling was adjusted according to the relative size of sub-sectors measured by value-added. Thus, sub-sectors with a relatively larger share of contribu-tion to nacontribu-tional GDP were included with a proporcontribu-tionately larger number of interviews, allowing to get an approximately representative picture at the country-sector level. Table 2.4 shows the number of successfully completed

interviews in each country-sector cell for the e-Business Watch survey which was carried out in Nov/Dec 2003. All 10 sectors were covered only in the five largest European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK) and two accessing countries (Estonia and Poland). Consequently, only these seven countries which exhibit a complete and homogeneous sector coverage that enables cross-country and cross-sector comparisons.

Table 2.5: Country-sector coverage e-Business W@tch survey 2005

The e-Business Survey 2005, which was the third survey after those of 2002 and 2003, had a scope of 5,218 telephone interviews with decision-makers in enterprises from seven EU countries. In contrast to the surveys of 2002 and 2003, the survey of 2005 considered only companies that used computers. Thus, the highest level of the population ("base") was the set of all computer-using enterprises which were active within the national territory of one of the respective countries, and which had their primary business activity in one of the sectors specified by NACE Rev. 1.1 categories. The sample drawn was a random sample of companies from the respective sector population in each of the seven countries, with the objective of fulfilling strata with respect to company size class and no cut-off was made in terms of minimum size of firms. Strata were to include a share of at least 10% of large companies (250+ employees) per country-sector cell, 30% of medium sized enterprises (50-249 employees), 25% of small enterprises (10-49 employees) and up to 35% of micro enterprises with less than 10 employees. Table 2.5 shows the number of successfully completed interviews in each

country-sector cell for the survey which was carried out in 2005. Within this survey, all 10 sectors were covered in each country, which gives a complete and homogeneous sector-country coverage.

Table 2.6: Country-sector coverage e-Business W@tch survey 2006

The e-Business Watch survey 2006 was the fourth survey after those of 2002, 2003 and 2005 and had a scope of 14,081 interviews with decision-makers in enterprises from 29 countries, including the 25 EU Member States, EEA and Candidate Countries. The design of the questionnaire builds on the ones used in the previous surveys from 2002 to 2005. As in 2005, the survey considered only companies that used computers. Thus, the highest level of the population was the set of all computer-using enterprises which were active

within the national territory of one of the 29 countries covered, and which had their primary business activity in one of the 10 sectors specified on the basis of NACE Rev. 1.1.

No cut-off was made in terms of minimum size of firms. The sample drawn was a random sample of companies from the respective sector population in each of the seven countries, with the objective of fulfilling minimum strata with respect to company size class per country-sector cell. Strata were to include a 10% share of large companies (250+ employees), 30% of medium sized enterprises (50-249 employees), 25% of small enterprises (10-49 employ-ees) and up to 35% of micro enterprises with less than 10 employees. Samples were drawn based on widely recognized business directories and databases.

In most countries, between 400 and 750 interviews were conducted. Table 2.6 shows the number of successfully completed interviews in each country-sector cell for the e-Business Watch survey which was carried out in 2006.